Life is a box of chocolates in downtown Stevens Point

Lori Kaye Lodes

Contributor

September 1, 2025

STEVENS POINT – Caed Confections is giving downtown Stevens Point a sweet reason to indulge – which Owner Presley Rhode said helps remind customers that great chocolate isn’t just a treat, but an experience.

Whether it stirs up childhood memories or simply satisfies a craving, Rhode said the shop is all about the joy of premium, handcrafted chocolate.

Located at 1100 Main St., Ste. 180, the storefront opened in late June and features small-batch, gourmet chocolates made with high-quality Belgian chocolate.

Rhode said the retail space is the latest step for the business, which launched in late 2024 as a wholesale and online venture before expanding into a brick-and-mortar shop.

“In the beginning, I used a shared-use kitchen, but I knew I wanted to have a candy store,” she said. “We [didn’t] have a candy store in Stevens Point, and the nearest one in Wausau imports probably 90% of its chocolate.”

Rhode said she quickly realized she wanted to create a premium experience centered around chocolate.

“I wanted people to have the best chocolate experience, especially with chocolate being so expensive,” she said. “If you’re going to pay for it, I wanted it to be the best.”

Rhode said that led her to pursue her own retail opportunity as a relatively new chocolatier – a specialist in crafting confections and other chocolate-based treats.

It was an evolution for her – as she said prior to shifting her focus to chocolate, she worked as a professional baker for 12 years.

“I always loved chocolate, but thought I had to go to school to learn it,” she said. “But, when I [reflected], I realized I didn’t go to school for baking, either – I learned from family and at the bakery. And yet, chocolate felt a bit out of reach.”

That is, Rhode said, until she dabbled in a chocolate class and uncovered a whole new delight.

“I felt a little burned out by the bakery industry, and when I tried making chocolate, I loved it – I absolutely loved it,” she said. “There is so much more freedom in chocolate.”

That excitement, Rhode said, served as inspiration for Caed Confections – with the name being a blend of a few letters of her two children, Eden and Canaan.

She said she leaned on her tech-savvy husband to build the website and began by offering her chocolates wholesale to local businesses she felt complemented her products well.

Rhode said Feltz’s Dairy Store in Stevens Point was the first to offer her chocolate as a complement to their cheeses and farm-fresh meats. 

“Feltz’s offers Wisconsin-made goods, and in the fall, it’s a nuthouse there,” she said. “I thought, ‘If I can get in there, I can do this.’”

From there, Rhode said she reached out to a variety of other local businesses, then followed up by visiting in person with samples

Among the first – and most popular – items Caed Confections has to offer, she said, are bonbons – chocolate shells filled with ganache, caramel, jelly or other delectable fillings. “Bonbons were one of the first things I learned with chocolate, and fortunately, they’re versatile enough where you can offer different shells or fillings,” she said. “There’s a lot of playing ground with bonbons with so many different flavors. There’s something for everybody.”

Bite-sized beauties

Creating a batch of bonbons – which is ideally a three-day process – Rhode said, is definitely a labor of love.

She said the process starts by painting the molds with color, letting them set, then adding a chocolate shell.

After that, Rhode said she adds the filling, lets it crystallize, seals it with a chocolate cap and allows everything to set before removing the finished pieces from the molds.

For many of the flavors, she said she uses products from local businesses, whether it’s Mission Coffeehouse’s finely-ground coffee powder for their coffee ganache and coffee caramel bonbons, Great Northern’s Whiskey in other bonbons or lavender from a friend’s lavender farm.

“If there is an ingredient that can be found locally, I like to support somebody I know,” she said.

Even now, with the storefront offering a variety of chocolates – including chocolate bars, candied pecans, toffee, fudge and other non-chocolate confections – Rhode said it’s no surprise the ever-versatile bonbons reign supreme.

She said she appreciates the bonbons for not only their versatility but also for offering a vehicle for her creativity.

Rhode said she makes all the chocolate herself, while her sister makes the store’s fudge.

She said she supplements her store-made chocolates with some she brings in, such as soy-free chocolates, which are too expensive to make in-house.

Rhode said the storefront downtown encompasses two suites, which offers plenty of room to both showcase confections, as well as provide seating to customers.

“It’s a little bigger than we need now, but it gives us the ability to expand,” she said. “The front suite is beautiful, with floor-to-ceiling windows and seating there. We encourage customers from the coffee shop across the hallway to come in with their [Mission Coffeehouse] coffee.”

Rhode said she counts herself lucky to secure the location, taking over space from a prior tenant who sought to get out of their lease early.

She said she had looked at a variety of locations but is so glad the downtown location is the one she pursued.

“I don’t think I would be doing as well [elsewhere], because we get a lot of ‘accidental traffic’ being downtown,” she said. “Anywhere else, I would have had to make [the store] its own destination.”

Inside, Rhode said she stocks a bookshelf with prepackaged chocolates – including the four-piece bonbon box for easy grab-and-go – but also features chocolates in her bakery-style case for those who prefer to build their own box of chocolates.

She said she typically features 12-13 flavors complemented by her candy bar display and some other non-chocolate candies – many of which are curated from other small and/or woman-owned businesses.

“Chocolate is our main focus, but we have other options, such as gummy bears or caramels, because not everybody loves chocolate,” she said.

Sugar rush

Rhode said she already has regulars who pop in for their favorites, and promotion by the Stevens Point Area Convention & Visitors Bureau and social media has gone a long way in drawing people to the store.

“The visitors bureau did a reel on my business that brought in so many people, and social media is a great way to get people in,” she said. 

Though there’s room to grow her customer base, Rhode said she’s pleasantly surprised by the uptick in business – so much so that she changed her original plans to work at the store and hold a second job.

“Within a couple of weeks of opening, it was clear I needed to focus on this,” she said. “We’ve had enough growth that I can solely be here.”

Fortunately, Rhode said she’s had friends and family who fill in at the store as needed, including her mom, her good friend and her sister.

She said she is hopeful that with the upcoming holidays, especially Thanksgiving and the Christmas season, she can add someone to the team.

“That’s when I expect to see the most sales, and hiring will determine if we offer more (products) or not,” she said. “I know we’ll have seasonal flavors [of bonbons], and I plan to sell jarred caramel in the fall for caramel apple season.”

Rhode said she fully expects an uptick of business as the holidays approach, hearing frequently from customers that they’ll be in to stock up for Christmas gifts.

“We regularly hear, ‘This is just what the downtown needed,’ or ‘I’m so excited to have a chocolate shop,’” she said. “That’s great because before I opened, I didn’t know what would be the case.”

A sweet balance

Opening the business, Rhode said, has been about just that – business – but it’s also allowed her to pursue a family-friendly career.

After working in a bakery and the early hours it requires, Rhode said she was intentional with creating business hours with Caed Confections that allow her to run the business around her family’s schedule.

“For example, I open the shop after taking my son to school,” she said. “I want family to be the center of my life.”

So far, Rhode said it’s working well.

As the business continues to grow and draw revenue, she said she plans to purchase equipment to make chocolate-covered coffee beans and nuts.

Rhode said her chocolate education is ongoing as well – as she has taken several online courses to better understand product shelf life and filling stability, as well as an in-person course on painting with a chocolatier.

She said she has been able to take recipes she’s discovered, adjust them and make them her own while maintaining shelf stability.

Not only does the continued education have direct applicability for the consumer-facing products in the store, but Rhode said it also impacts the orders she takes and delivers for community events.

An example of this, she said, is a recent event for the Salvation Army – which sought custom, Under the Stars-themed bonbons in keeping with the theme of the night. 

“The event needed 750 bonbons, and I got them done,” she said.

Events like those, Rhode said, have a trickle-down effect.

The day after, she said she had some event attendees in the store.

“They came in and said, ‘I had your chocolate, and now I want more,’” she said.

Learn more about Caed Confections, including shop hours, at caedconfections.com or find it on social media.